Mar 2 2010

Wow, a year already, huh?

Guess what? Paul’s family is coming to visit us next week from California. We’re so excited to see them, and guess what I just realized? They were out here at this same time last year, too. As a matter of fact, let’s take a look back in time at the entry I made exactly one year ago. On March 2nd of last year, I said…

Paul’s aunt and cousin are coming out from Cali in about a week, and we want the house to look really nice. I love these “Oh shit! People are coming! Hurry!” moments we seem to have, because they really kick Paul in the ass when it comes to stuff around the house. I guarantee we’ll get stuff done this week that I’ve been nagging him about since day one. What do you want to bet by the end of the week, there will be hooks for backpacks and lunchboxes and kids’ coats, and curtain rods in place, and all the stuff on the walls that require a drill and a level for hanging.

Huh! An entire year has passed, and my house is still in a state of disarray! We do have hooks for backpacks and lunchboxes and kids’ coats, and we do have curtain rods and stuff on the walls that required a drill and a level to hang. But…we also have ten times more toys than the kids really need, which is reflected in the chaos you have to wade through in the study. Which is where our houseguests will be SLEEPING. Here’s a nice little view of the study, taken from the hallway…

Nice and neat, huh? What you can’t see in this picture is the whole wall on the left side of the room, which is completely covered with toy bins, baskets of dress-up clothes, and a dollhouse. That’s in addition to the huge bin ‘o shoes and the rack containing all the kids’ coats and backpacks. And much of that stuff gets dragged out into the middle of the room, so that you have to step super carefully wherever you can find floor space. Many days, it looks like it’s straight out of Hoarders. How, praytell, am I going to fit a queen sized AeroBed in there? This is going to be tricky.

And why is it that a year, a full YEAR after we moved into this house, we’re still bursting at the seams with…STUFF? I’m blaming my husband. We’re probably going to BE one of those families on Hoarders in years to come! Don’t tell him, but I take bags and bags of stuff to Goodwill every month, and he never even notices.

Wish me luck over the next week – like I said last year, I love having a deadline looming over us. It really gets our asses in gear! Bring it on, man!

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Feb 17 2010

I love Vinegar!

Okay, yeah. I’ve heard of “Works for me Wednesday”, also known as WFMW around the blogosphere, but it’s not something I’ve ever felt compelled to participate in. Until the other day. I was trying to find some decent crockpot recipes, and I just happened to find this recipe for crockpot Dijon chicken, posted by the delightful Domestic Chicky, and I figured, it’s probably pretty tasty. I met Deanna in person at the Sony Mommy Blogger Event, and I have faith in her recipe pickin’. So then I clicked through to some other WFMW blog entries, and realized, OMG. There are a lot of smart cookies out there sharing some great ideas – why haven’t I gotten in on this sooner? I thought to myself, surely I have LOADS of ideas to share. Pure gems. Right? I’m a mommy of five. Raising two sets of twins. Parent of a teenager. Advocate for my special needs child. Kickass wife. I have wisdom to share. I’m certain of it.

Until I sat down to write a post, and realized I don’t have a damned thing to say here. I’m happy, and my family is happy, but we live at the Casa de Chaos, remember? If anyone should be writing “works for me!” it should be my husband. He’s the organization expert. He’s the enginerd who can design and build anything. I sat here and scratched my head for a minute, trying to come up with SOMETHING worthy of a blog post. And then it came to me. VINEGAR. Yep, that’s the sort of thing I get excited about. Writing about the virtues of vinegar. Hey, my younger twins start Kindergarten in July. I’ll try to use that extra free time to get a life. Anyway, here are some things I’ve learned while parenting five children and cleaning up the messes they leave in their wake.

VINEGAR IS AMAZING. You can clean anything with it. It’s cheap as hell. You can buy a whole gallon of it for like two bucks. Here’s what I do with it.

  • SHOWER DOORS – we have crazy ridiculous hard water, which WRECKS our glass shower doors. They look horrible all the time, unless I spray them down with white vinegar, which almost instantly cuts through the mineral build-up. Lime-Away does an even better job, but I don’t feel as good about liberally spraying down by shower with something as toxic as that. Spray your shower doors with vinegar, wipe, and voila. Clean shower doors. And a craving for vinegar potato chips. You’ve been warned.
  • LAUNDRY – once in awhile, I forget a load of clothes in the washer and they start to smell like mildew in a couple of hours. Actually, pool towels are the worst. We always end up with a forgotten towel in the wayback of the Tahoe, and then the whole vehicle smells smelly. Those stinky towels and clothes can be immediately revived if you throw them in the washer and add about half a cup of vinegar to the detergent.
  • DRAINS – got gunk in your drain? Is it draining kind of slowly? I got this tip from my own grandmother. Half a cup of baking soda, half a cup of salt. Pour those right down the drain, and then add a good sized glug of white vinegar. It will immediately start erupting and foaming. Let that sit for about five minutes, then hit it with hot water for a few minutes. Nice clean drain!

    • These are my top three uses for vinegar, but this isn’t even all I do with it. I pour it over my kids’ heads in the bath after we go to the pool – it gets that chlorine out really well. I put it in my mop bucket when I clean my kitchen floor. I run it through my coffee maker once in awhile to get rid of that hard water build-up that I mentioned earlier. I’m telling ya, vinegar is magic, and it’s cheap!

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